Frank Belknap Long

“ It was at that moment Mary Anne ceased to think as a child. She dug her knuckles into her mouth to keep from screaming but the undaunted way in which her mind worked was a tribute to her forgetfulness of self. If he should do that to Melvin!
Tall-Thin must have sensed the loathing in her mind, for he turned with a grimace of rage and trained the beam full upon her, taking care however to alter the tube's destructive potential with a quick twist of his thumb.
"A primitive would have been sorely tempted to kill you, Earth-child," he said. ”

“ The rocket's trajectory would have to be modified by small readjustments that could only be made by auxiliary fuels.
Melvin, think hard! Think hard and fast, and in the right way!
They're stopping now to puzzle it out, came from Melvin. Their minds work differently from ours. They fasten on the big important things first. The small things they sometimes overlook. They can't help it. Their minds are constructed that way.
Mustn't let trivialities distract us. That's what they were thinking. That's what they were thinking, and they were going to make a mistake. ”

“ The President would come because her daddy was a very important and wonderful man. He didn't have much money but he'd be rich and famous if the rocket reached the moon.
Most men as wonderful as her daddy were poor until they did something to make people stand up and shout. The little men didn't want her daddy to become rich so that he could send Melvin through college and she could go to college too. The little men didn't want her to learn domestic housekeeping and make the handsomest man in all the world happy.
The little men wouldn't—couldn't—take the rocket out to the proving-ground. ”

“ Elwood tossed the magazine then—straight across the table at the disturbed Melvin.
"If he's a liar so am I!" Mary Anne gasped in angry protest.
"For a dozen years now flying saucer rumors have been all over the place," Elwood said, glaring at both of his children. "I suppose it's only natural you should chatter occasionally about little men. All children do. But to use such imaginary companions as an excuse for an act of wanton destructiveness...." ”

“ Tall-Thin's voice was a merciless rasp. "A well-organized logical mind does not make such mistakes. Now we are facing utter disaster unless we can get back to our home planet and warn The Twenty that it would be sheer madness to attempt to colonize this planet again without better disease-preventing safeguards and atmosphere-resisting metals. Such safeguards can and must be worked out."
Tall-Thin paused, watching Melvin as if apprehensive that the praise he was about to bestow would be held against him to the detriment of his vanity. ”

“ The next morning, Elwood didn't merely hurl the magazine at his son. He pointed first to the article, tapping furiously with his forefinger at Melvin's photograph while his breakfast grew cold at his elbow.
"Melvin, I warned you to keep your hands off that rocket. I warned you not to touch it or jar it in any way. But you had to putter around until you did something to the heat exchanger dial. It's conduct like that which makes me realize how mistaken these journalist monkeys can be. A genius! You're no more of a genius—"
"Pop, you've got to believe me!" Melvin protested. ”

“ I don't mind your puttering around a bit with the tools so long as you don't touch the rocket." Elwood's face grew suddenly strained. "Promise me you won't."
"He won't!" Mary Anne promised.
She waited for her father's footsteps to echo hollowly on the floor above before she turned her ire full upon Melvin. "If I was a boy I'd be more considerate of daddy than you are!" she exclaimed, accusingly. "You don't care how tired he gets."
"You're not a boy," Melvin retorted. "You never could be. What's the sense in fooling yourself?"
"You just repeat everything he tells you," Mary Anne flared. ”

“ Hot steam in the turbines, pushed right through the heat exchanger. The atomic charge won't go of at all if the heat exchanger works fast enough.
They don't know as much about the rocket as Pop does, came from Melvin. The atomic part is the big important part. They came at night and studied that. But the heat exchanger—they didn't take the trouble to study it. Now they're worried about it. Why should an atomic rocket have auxiliary fuels?
Daddy could have told them. You had to have auxiliary fuels in a rocket if you were going to send it to the moon. ”

“ Rujit countered. "We would not have survived and become great as a race if we had not conquered all such squeamishness in ourselves. We must be prepared to nullify all opposition by instant drastic action—the most drastic action available to us at any given time." ”

“ Mary Anne nodded. "I knew what you were thinking and they knew what we...." Mary Anne stopped. "Melvin! You fooled them! Inside the ship they didn't hear us talking together. If they had heard us they would not have made a mistake and turned the wrong dial."
"Yeah, I know. I tried to throw up a mental block when we talked about the auxiliary fuel-chamber and what would happen if the heat exchanger worked fast enough. I guess it worked. The mental block, I mean...."
"You bet it worked, Melvin. You're wonderful, Melvin." ”

“ He raised the tube which had projected the beam until it was pointing directly at Rujit.
"I'm going to step up the beam," he said.
"But why? Why, Hilili? For the love you bear me—"
"I bear you no love."
"But you are my biogenetic twin, Hilili. We have been closer than ordinary brothers from birth."
"It does not matter. It does not concern me. Family relationships militate against survival when reason falters in a single member of a family group."
Tall-Thin's voice hardened. "We came to this planet for one purpose—to colonize it for the good of all. ”

“ As befits a former protégé of the late great Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Mr. Long is a master of the horror story. More, he is well aware that the deepest terror may not always stem from the infinitely large. Sometimes the infinitely small can be even worse. ”

“ Fiery disks they must have seemed to the Earth dwellers, so terrifying that they would have eventually found a way to fathom the mystery, and strike back. A perishing remnant of an advanced race has never yet succeeded in killing two billion primitives armed with Class C-type weapons. ”